Return to Sender: Moments to Remember
by QueenCazador
Summary: Boone and the Courier reminisce on their unusual first encounter in Novac, but the memories aren't quite as grand for Boone as they are for Six. Boone recalls the moments leading up to their first encounter that could have ended the former soldier's adventures for good. Two-shot. Mild violent themes.


His calloused fingers, while they belonged to a man of impressive size, moved with the precision of a surgeon to remove the shell casing from his previous shot with his gilded sniper rifle. He slid five bullets into their respective barrel slots for the next round as he had done thousands of time before. A deep breath, an eye through the scope to mark his next victim, and the slow following of his hand with his target's head.

An exhale.

A trigger pulled.

There was a bang in the distance, and a fraction of a second later, the last fire gecko of the nest that the Courier had stumbled upon was dead. The Courier raised her arms above her head in a 'O' position, signaling that it was safe to come down. Her companion, a man she knew by the name of Boone, slid down the sand dune that he was perched upon with one hand over his beret. She met him near the base of the dune and laughed.

"You know, I'm not really a fan of this whole 'playing bait' idea." She smiled.

"I've got your back. You know that." Boone answered, keeping his stoic face even though he knew the Courier was half-joking.

"I know, I know." The Courier assured him, "What would we do without you?"

Boone didn't speak again until they had set up a campfire and laid out their bedrolls, but this didn't bother the Courier. It was quite normal actually. They would go for days sometimes without him speaking no more than a few sentences. Boone was a straight-to-business kind of guy who didn't spend valuable time in idle conversation. The Courier had never seen him smile, but after all of the adventures that they had been on together, she knew that their friendship was genuine.

She didn't know too much about his past, which was fine by her, because she literally had none to tell him about in return. Any clues on his past life were picked up in small bits of conversation, his mannerisms, and once in a while, the occasional conversation with a stranger who knew him once. He was a clean-cut gentleman, who kept his head shaved as just as it was when he served in the military. He never removed his authority glasses while he was awake, but the Courier knew that his dark shades didn't hide much external emotion. He was an attractive man, but too quiet and stoic for the Courier to think of as someone to settle down with later in her life after she cleaned the Mojave up. But there was another reason for that too.

Boone sat at the edge of his bedroll polishing his sniper rifle and cleaning the scope. He treated the weapon almost like a newborn child, cleaning it, mending it, and making sure that it fired with the grace and tenacity of a radscorpion sting. The Courier smirked. She figured that it was his most prized possession- except for his NCR First Recon beret from his touring days.

"Do you ever take it off?" the Courier asked the sniper, pointing to his red beret. Boone gave her a look, that even through his aviators, she could tell he was questioning if she had really asked such an obvious question. He shook his head.

"I haven't seen you without that thing since the day that we met." the Courier teased, but telling the truth. "Do you remember that day?"

Boone stopped. He remembered that day all right, but he remembered the hours of the night just before their first encounter even more.

* * *

It was a quiet night as usual in the small town of Novac and the snipers had just exchanged places in the mouth of the famous dinosaur with the changing of day to night. There were no radscorpions to fend off from the townspeople, and no bandits who had taken a few too many shots of psycho and wanted to test the town's limits. But the sniper guessed that too many of their friends had tried that before and ended up with a bullet between their eyes. Other than a traveling couple and their bramin that checked into the hotel just before dark, there had not been a soul outside the town gates all night. The sniper who had just checked in made a quick scouting of the town to see if anyone was watching him, then snuck a quick shot of scotch. He took another, then another, trying to drown out of his mind the events that took place just a mere two hours ago.

...

Craig Boone sat at the edge of his bed. The hotel room he was in was one of many that consisted of the majority of housing in the small town. But his room was unlike the others in that other Novac residents didn't have empty cartridges of jet strewn around the floor and otherwise empty tables. The drugs helped him to forget. They helped him to forget her smile, her laugh, the way her slender arms used to caress his large, muscular frame. They were the best memories of his life. But now she was gone.

There weren't many positions in Novac security. There were only two in fact. One was taken by Manny Vargas, a retired NCR sniper just like Boone. The duo were known for their ability to hit a cazador's eye from 500 yards away, but unlike the sniper rifle hitting a distant target, the .357 resting in his hand and pointed at his head wouldn't need accuracy. His girl was gone, and never coming back. He could never love another as he had loved Carla. She was his entire life. Nothing could compare to what she was.

Most people Boone's age were starting to fall in love with the one they would spend the rest of their life with. But unlike them, Boone had already found and married the love of his life. He had retired from his high position as a NCR First Recon Sniper to live the rest of his life with her, and build a simple life. They were even expecting a child together.

But Carla was dead.

His future was gone.

...

A woman in a bright blue vault jumpsuit approached the town limits. Boone didn't even bother reaching for his rifle to scope her. He figured that if she was stupid enough to wear such a luminescent color in the Mojave, she wasn't trying for camouflage, and from the thin material, she wasn't looking for protection from attacks either. She did have a shotgun strapped to her back, but looked to be mostly for self-defense, and it was nothing that could wreak havoc among the town. She carried herself with confidence; he could see it in her stride and posture, but she walked quickly as if she was scared of whatever was out in the Mojave tonight. She traveled light, Boone judged from the small pack she carried, but he wasn't sure what to make of this either. He'd seen packs as small as that on doomed travelers that carried everything that they owned inside them, but he'd also seen well-seasoned travelers who only carried with them the bare minimum of supplies. She was a strange one for sure, but she wasn't by any means a threat. He allowed her to enter the hotel lobby without a second thought.

After the woman had exited the lobby, presumably with a room key, Boone took another long drink of scotch, and leaned his shoulder against a tooth of the dinosaur. He stared downwards, towards the cracked desert ground, as desolate and barren as his broken heart.

A sudden squeak of the door hinge behind him startled him back into his duty. In a split second, he processed that it wasn't Cliff, the shopkeeper, who always gave four knocks before disturbing him. This was an outsider. Had they found him? If they had, he wasn't going down easy. He raised his rifle towards the door just in time to have the head of the woman in the blue vault suit in the center of his scope.

"Goddamnit, don't sneak up on me like that!" Boone spat at the woman, lowering his rifle. She stumbled backwards, her ankles buckling to the sides and her hands reaching for the doorknob behind her.

"What do you want?" He interrogated.

The woman regained her footing. "Expecting visitors?" She asked with a nervous laugh.

"Yeah. I guess maybe I am. But not like you." The sniper mumbled and scratched his head. "Huh. Maybe it should have been you I was expecting all along. Why are you here?"

"I-If you're looking for someone in particular I could tip you off if I see them." The woman stuttered.

"Yeah, we'll you see anybody wearing legion crimson or a lot of sports equipment you just let me know." the woman looked to his NCR beret and began making connections. "You still haven't answered my question." He huffed.

"I'm just looking around." The woman said, extending her neck in order to see further out of the dinosaur's mouth.

"There's nothing up here." He grumbled.

"There's a sniper." The woman retorted. She wasn't backing down from whatever she wanted.

"I think you'd better leave." Boone asserted after a long pause.

"Do you treat everyone around here like this?" She asked, not obviously offended, but knowing not to push the man with the big gun any further. She turned around to open the door.

"Wait." Boone said. She turned back around. You just got into town. Maybe you shouldn't go. Not just yet."

"Why is that?" The woman asked with a hint of annoyance.

"I need someone I can trust." He admitted, "You're a stranger. That's a start."

"You only trust strangers?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I said it was a start. This town... Nobody looks me straight in the eye anymore." He said, breaking eye contact for the first time in their entire conversation. He felt weak, desperate, and unlike the man he knew that he used to be.

"What do you want me to do?" The woman asked after a pause.

"I want you to find something out for me. I don't know if there's anything to find, but I need someone to try…"

He explained to her how his wife was taken by Legion slavers in the middle of the night…

...

He tried every night to shut out the memories of returning to their hotel room one morning after work to find the room ransacked and his beloved girl missing, and only a piece of torn crimson fabric in her place. The clue was enough for him. He could never forget the memories of breaking the door off its hinges, frantically asking Novac's citizens if they had seen where the love of his life had gone. The feeling of panic as he ran into the desert, unable to find the one that had given his life purpose. And the tears. Boone had not cried as he slaughtered Legionaries, Fiends, or even simple thugs, although he knew that they all had a story behind them, because they were all human as he was. Boone did not cry at Bitter Springs, where innocent women, children, the sick, and the elderly had died in cold blood by his sniper rifle. Boone had never cried in his life. Boone did not cry until he sat on the side of highway 95, without a single clue as to where Carla was taken.

Craig Boone didn't fear death at first. He didn't fear it when his camp was overrun with Legion savages. When he was one of the eight soldiers who not only survived but defeated the ambush of Caesar's parasites, he earned his ranks as a First Recon Sniper. He didn't fear death when his unit was asked to answer for their appalling actions at Bitter Springs. He didn't fear death during his entire tour with the NCR First Recon unit.

But for the first time in his 26 years of living, when he met Carla, he knew what it meant to love life. He couldn't quite pinpoint with words what it was about her that gave him new life, but he could see it in flashbacks. It was her brunette hair, perfectly curled just above her shoulders that bounced when she strutted down the New Vegas strip towards him for the first time. It was her narrow cheekbones that perfectly framed her lips, and offset the beauty mark on her chin. The triumph of winning a hundred battles couldn't even compare to the smile that she gave him every morning when he awoke to eat breakfast in the evening with her before his night shift.

But after Carla had left this world, Craig Boone no longer feared his own death again. In fact, he was embracing the thought of no longer carrying on. His life was over. His girl was gone. Maybe death would reunite them.

He put the barrel of the gun to his head, and his trembling finger on the trigger.

...

The woman listened to his story, and Boone felt almost ashamed of himself. This was emotion, the feeling that was driven out of you by First Recon training. This was not Craig Boone. He was now a shadow of the man that he once was. But he was desperate. This was his last chance of redemption.

"All right." The woman said, a hint of disturbance on her face from hearing the soldier's story.

Boone held his breath.

"I'll keep an eye out for anything." she said.

Boone had never felt a larger feeling of relief in his life. This was a friend in a town of enemies. This was a person who could be trusted. In a tribute of thanks, he offered her his Frist Recon beret, and told her to wear it when she had brought the traitor to the dinosaur to meet their end. She took the beret without too much thought, wished him luck, and departed back to the hotel.

Boone sat in the dinosaur's mouth, watching the woman go from room to room in the hotel, searching for clues to his mystery. A moment of panic jolted inside of him when she came to his room, and knocked on the door. If it was unlocked, she would likely go inside, and see the mess of a life he had made. She would see the letters from Carla that he read every night, the packs of jet and mentats littering the floor around the bed, and the gun that he held to his head just a few hours ago.

...

This was it.

This was the price of his sins. To be begging for death, because the greatest gift that one could receive had been turned against him. He had a hand of twos and sevens with everything on the line. The game was over.

But he didn't fold.

Boone threw the gun to the ground, where it slid across the room and hit the opposite wall. The dim glow of twilight shining through the curtains told him that it was almost time for his shift. There was something about tonight. Something that told him to give this life one more shot.

He figured that he could last one more night.

Boone grabbed his rifle to man the dinosaur night shift one last time.

...

The woman walked away from his door however, and continued on to the lobby. Boone sighed with relief. He was afraid of his one friend abandoning him if she saw the things that he was neck-deep into; depression, drugs, alcoholism, just to name a few. He couldn't imagine rejection from her now. Not after all that he had been through.

He sat alone in darkness and silence when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching below him. He looked through his scope, and saw the faint blue glow of the woman's vault suit. But there was someone at her side. He made the faint outline of another woman, shorter than his new companion, and considerably slower. Something on the side of the second woman's face caught a glimpse of light, reflecting it back to the dinosaur. _No_, Boone thought, _it couldn't be…_

But his thoughts were confirmed when the woman reached into her small pack, and put on the red beret. It was all going to end now.

"For my baby…" Boone whispered to Carla, wherever she was.

He raised his sniper rifle, the same one that had taken the lives of hundreds of enemies, and the life of his love.

The same one that they never saw coming.

An exhale.

A trigger pulled.

Jeannie May lay on the ground, the latest victim of the sniper. The woman in the vault suit jumped at the sound and speed of his shot before realizing that it was from him. She walked up the stairs of the dinosaur in silence, and handed him a single piece of paper. He didn't have to look at it to know what it was.

"So what will you do after this?" the woman asked, clearly worried about his safety.

"I don't know. I won't be staying, I know that. Don't see much point in anything now except hunting legionaries." he said, looking off out of the dinosaur's mouth, and into the distance. "Maybe I'll wander like you."

"Come with me. Let's go after the Legion." she smiled, the eagerness in her voice almost making Boone sick.

"You don't want to do that." He warned, "This isn't going to end well."

He had seen countless of his friends die in the military. He had seen their limbs being ripped apart from their bodies from a wrong step into a mine field. He had seen their veins spurting blood like some sort of grotesque New Vegas casino fountain. He had been by their side as they died, silent, because he wasn't going to tell them that everything was going to be ok. He was not one to sugar coat situations, and he despised liars almost as much as the Legion. He simply stayed with them, even in the heat of combat, and made sure that they didn't die alone, because to be alone is the greatest burden one could ever bear.

Then he looked back at the woman. Her blonde hair was tied back into a messy bun, and he could see a bobby pin or two holding it in place- or hidden there in case she ever needed to break herself out of a jam. While the assault rifle she carried may have looked oversized and out-of-place on other women, the grooves seemed to match her body perfectly, as if the gun itself was tailored for this woman herself. She had fitted the toes and heels of her boots with scrap metal, trying to get in any resourceful attack that she could. She didn't have a hundred caps to her name, but she gave her acquaintances the impression that she didn't need riches in order to be successful. The woman's eyes seemed to tell a story in themselves; a story of confusion, pain, and appreciating beauty. If she didn't quite know what she was doing yet, she was well on her way to knowing. She walked with a purpose, but without a destination. And Craig Boone wasn't about to let her take on the burden of journeying alone.

"Fine. Let's get out of here."

She smiled, handed back his beret, opened the door from the dinosaur's mouth for him, and followed his lead from the hotel to the highway, walking into the sunrise over the barren Mojave.

"By the way, I never got your name." Boone admitted, ashamed of himself.

The woman laughed. "Call me Six."

"Six? Recon name?" Boone asked her. He once served with a young man who wanted to be called "Ace of Spades" when he was called up to serve in the First Recon, but Boone and his teammates knew better for this tenderfoot. They gave him 'Ten of Spades' instead, and told him that he had to work his way up to the rest.

"It's a long story…" she sighed, and began her descent down the dinosaur's stairs, "one that we're going to put together."

* * *

"The day we met?" Boone asked, sliding a hand down the side of the rifle's barrel, then sitting down on top of his bedroll across the campfire from Six. "Maybe I forgot."

The Courier knew that it was an emotional encounter for Boone, perhaps the most encounters he's ever had, second to anything having to do with Carla. It wasn't exactly the way a man seen as a hero wanted to leave his home, and she knew that now. Regardless of how much he loved Carla, he still cared for the citizens of Novac. But Six didn't want him to hide his emotions forever. She knew that somewhere, under the appearance of a stone-cold killer and a lost lover, Boone was hurt. And she knew why, but she wanted to know how.

"You forgot to remember one of the biggest changes of your life?" the Courier questioned. She wasn't going to let him off easy.

"Maybe I want to forget." Boone said.

"You're going to have to tell me sooner or later." The Courier noted, "About _her_, I mean."

The more he thought about telling her, the more it actually seemed like a good idea. He had told no one about Bitter Springs, about how Carla truly died, and about how he felt through this entire ordeal. She was a leader, there was no doubt in that. She had wrangled together a group of outcasts from across the wasteland, himself being one of them, and turned them into a force to be feared. Yet the NCR and the Legion didn't simply respect her out of fear, they respected her from her actions, her choices, and her decisions that seemed to benefit all of the groups of the wasteland. She was the most trustworthy person that Boone had ever met, and maybe that's why he simply considered telling her his story when he would tell it to no one else.

"Maybe one day, I will." Boone reasoned, turning away from Six and the campfire in his bedroll.

Until then, it was back to forgetting.

* * *

Notes:

I do not own any rights to the Fallout series or characters. This is my second shot at Fan Fiction, so reviews are greatly appreciated! Thank you for reading!


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